


The Always End.

by 9_of_Clubs



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, At the end of the line, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Bucky Barnes Deserves Better, Bucky Barnes Feels, Emotional Hurt, For that Scene, Hurt No Comfort, Infinity War Coda, M/M, Pain, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Working Through it with Words, there is only Steve, you know the one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 19:30:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14456202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/9_of_Clubs/pseuds/9_of_Clubs
Summary: At the end of line, always Bucky reaches for Steve.--Steve turns to him, and he’s so close, but just out of reach, like he had been as Bucky fell from a train,grab my hand,like he had been on the helicarrier,you’re my friend,and in Romania,You’re Steve,and in Wakanda,the best thing, for everybody.He’s Right. There. But Bucky can’t reach him, can’t move. Can’t even speak anymore.





	The Always End.

"Steve?"  
  
His lips form the words and he's grateful, he's so fucking grateful his throat makes this sound, because something is _wrong_ inside of him. And he's been undone, so many times before, he's been undone, has been flayed and skewered and opened up to see the the erratic beating of his own heart. He's tasted the exacting fear of fire scorching his skin, of water flooding his lungs.    
  
Of ice.

Every kind of rending, every last torment, has danced along his skin.

But.  
  
But there's a darkness here, in the way the spaces between his cells are unspooling, in the way the layers of his skin are starting to vibrate too fast, to separate from each other, in this wrongness Hydra could only have dreamt of, in the shaking way everything is starting to crumble, the air around him swelling too hot, and scent isn’t functioning the way it should, adrenaline beats poison into his evaporating bloodlines.  
  
Something is wrong.  
  
_Steve._ The word falls from his lips and Relief. Relief, inside the wrongness. When Steve hears him, when he doesn't just dream the sound but makes it. (There are echoes there, inside the word, of a boy swallowed by snow, who no longer exists. Of an innocence long lost and fear he thought himself immune to. He doesn't sound like himself. He sounds lost, he is lost.) But Steve turns to him, his eyes wide and then fearful, and it's easier, if only as a farce, to breathe. He fights to breathe, even as his lungs are shredding.

Steve turns to him, and he’s so close, but just out of reach, like he had been as Bucky fell from a train, _grab my hand_ , like he had been on the helicarrier, _you’re my friend_ , and in Romania, _You’re Steve,_ and in Wakanda, _the best thing, for everybody._ He’s Right. There. But Bucky can’t reach him, can’t move. Can’t even speak anymore.

_Steve._

Time, he'd thought, the one factor which seemed, at least, to grant itself mercilessly to him.  
  
Next time, he’d thought. Next time, _I'll be better._ Maybe he'd promised into Steve's skin, on one visit or another. _It's better already._  
  
But not yet. He'd thought. Not yet in reach.

Next time.

Next time.  
  
Now.

Close. So close.  
  
The vision of a future disintegrates before him, with him, as it always does. And he tries not to think of it, but it creeps nefarious into him, the visions that are starting to dull in color, to go black and white with the loss of parts of him he can’t even name, missing circuits and fading organs. He tries not to imagine holding Steve, his fingers on his cheek, lips burning against his throat. He tries not to think of laughter, their hands entwined. He tries not to think of love. Of all the things that have again moved back to impossible.  
  
He wants to scream, maybe, there’s more he wants to say too, to promise, to plead, to - he doesn’t know and it doesn’t matter, the frustration ebbing up, but dying quickly, disappearing, because half people don’t get to keep emotion as the neurotransmitters in his brain die away, because his mouth isn't even fully in his control anymore, anyway.

It's not painful exactly, your own disintegration, at least this one isn't, just uncannily uncomfortable, the growing sensation of cessation.  
  
He hadn’t thought about dying in this battle really, or maybe he just expected that he’s stopped existing so many times before, he’d be ready for it, unmoved, if it happened, but he isn’t. Desperately, for as long as he can, he wants to stay. He wants to live. To see his stupid sheep again, to lay Steve back against his bed, to hear their breaths come in and out in time to the beating of their hearts, skin against skin. But sensation is turning to only memory, the air doesn’t glide against his cheek anymore, is there even a cheek left? He can’t smell the ash of Wakanda burning nor the sweet familiarity that’s come to mean _home_ beneath. He can’t taste the blood on his tongue. Everything is muddling, breaking down.  
  
This time at least, as the swirling nothing takes him, and there's really not that much to take, at the end of the day, and the whirring signals of his thoughts finish their breakdown into nothing but the most primal of patterns, blue fills his vision. Real and imagined, before him and in memory, the past and the present, the only future he’s ever seen at all. It surrounds, comforting and close, the last thing he holds, in the deepest parts of him, that lingers as everything blows to dust.

There's always a fight.  
  
It always ends in a fight.  
  
And he always ends with it.  
  
It ends this time, in a gentle blue and the echoed crashing of waves, maybe the sound of distant laughter, the press of a hand, warm, to what he knows, only faintly, might have once been his left shoulder, bare and tanned.

He always ends.  
  
At least this time, he does not end alone. 


End file.
